RADIO
Hello and welcome to the The Open Championship edition of Horse For The Course! This is the granddaddy of them all, golf's oldest test and the only major championship that is held outside of the United States. Similar to the U.S. Open, the British version rotates venues, with a different course hosting every year. The 2018 Open takes us to Carnoustie, perhaps the most difficult course in the Open Championship rotation. As with all majors, the field is loaded with the most talented players in the world. Unlike the other majors, weather is a crucial factor at the Open, especially at Carnoustie. It's possible that some of the favorites will basically be eliminated on day one if they get unlucky with weather. I have to advise all my readers to keep an eye on weather reports when making lineups this week. We often see either the morning or afternoon start times gain a significant advantage based on changing conditions. For those that will be multi-entering lineups this week, it's not a bad idea to stack based on start times, just so you are covered both ways. DFS sites are offering tons of options this week, including DraftKings "Millionaire Maker", which you can enter for a modest $20 entry fee. If you haven't played it in the past, I definitely recommend it. In honor of The Open Championship, I will be expanding the number of selections this week. Let's toss on our rain gear and get to it!
Horse For The Course will take a look at players that have traditionally flourished at the course that hosts this week’s PGA TOUR event. This is not a traditional picks column, but rather an attempt to pinpoint players that have outstanding results at a specific course. "The Horse" is a player with an elite course history and that has a great chance to repeat his success in this week's tournament. "The Ponies" are players with very good course history, that might be entering this week's tournament under the radar or have a DFS price that is a great value. Due to this week's tournament being played on a course that is not a regular Tour stop, we are forced to veer away from our normal course history strategy. This week's column will attempt to identify the best DFS plays available.
For a full review of the DraftKings PGA Slate this weekend, check out Seth Finklestein's column reviewing picks at every price point.
For those looking for insight into tournament odds and matchups, try our PGA DFS: Vegas Report by Las Vegas resident Spencer Aguiar.
Editor's Note: Our friends at Fantasy National have built some incredible DFS Golf lineup tools including a Lineup Optimizer, Stat Engine, Ownership Projections and Course Breakdowns. They are by far the best daily fantasy Golf tools in the industry. Seriously. You can read all about them here and see screenshots.
The Course: Carnoustie - Par 71 - 7,402 Yards
Widely recognized as the most difficult course in the Open rotation, Carnoustie will offer a significant challenge to this year's participants. At over 7,400 yards, it will be the longest course to ever host The Open. This will be Carnoustie's eighth time hosting The Open, with the first coming in 1931 and the last in 2007. Padraig Harrington won the 2007 version over Sergio Garcia with a score of 7-under par in relatively good weather conditions. Compare that to Paul Lawrie's winning score of 6-over in 1999 and it is easy to see that weather will play a huge factor this week. Thick rough and fescue, along with tons of scary bunkers are part of Carnoustie's defenses, but when the wind blows in off the Angus coast, things can get extremely difficult in a hurry. The fairways are narrow and we will see lots of players hitting less than driver off the tee. Carnoustie has had very little rain recently and is playing extremely firm and fast at the time of this writing.
The Horses
Justin Rose (DraftKings - $10,200 & FanDuel - $12,200 )
My top Horse for the U.S. Open was Dustin Johnson and I came very close to going back to the DJ well again, as I love how Carnoustie sets up for him. My second U.S. Open favorite was Justin Rose and I can't talk myself out of rolling with the Englishman again. Rose is a better value on DraftKings, where he comes in as the fourth-highest priced player. Let me say a quick word about the three players priced above Rose. I love DJ this week, he is probably the elite player whose game would be the least impacted by wind or weather, unless he just gets extremely unlucky. Rory should be a great play this week, but I prefer him at the more birdie-friendly courses where he can go crazy low. Carnoustie will be a grind and Rory's struggles with the putter might hurt him this week. I have no clue what to tell you about Jordan Spieth other than I wouldn't be surprised if he missed the cut, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he won the tournament...that's how unpredictable his game is at the moment.
Ok, enough about the other guys, let's talk about our man Justin Rose. I feel like Rose has been on a collision course with a major win for two years and Carnoustie sets up very nicely for what Rose does. He will find fairways and greens, make putts, and minimize damage when he does get into trouble. He has the talent, the experience, and the mental toughness to hang around for four days in the pressure-cooker that is The Open Championship. Rose's stats are impeccable, he ranks in the top 25 of every Strokes Gained category on the PGA Tour. Raised in England, Rose will be very comfortable on the links layout.
The downside to deploying Rose will be his ownership. I expect him to be the chalk this week. I'm talking Chalky McChalkerson. There is some valid game theory arguments that can be made to always "fade the chalk" in large fields like the Millionaire Maker. I'm not going down that rabbit hole in this article, but I do understand the concept. With all that being said, if Rose goes out and wins this tournament, you want him in your lineups. We have to combat Rose's high ownership by differentiating our lineups in other spots.
Brooks Koepka (DK - $9,200 & FD - $12,100)
Watching the U.S. Open recently, I had a thought about Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka. DJ is like the Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator, an awesome and unstoppable machine. This week's second Horse, Brooks Koepka, is like the upgraded Robert Patrick liquid metal Terminator in T2 and you're like..."Holy f**k! This one is even more scary than the Arnold Terminator!" Koepka is a golf machine, he doesn't care about the weather or the score or the layout or the fans, he's just there to hit 350 yard laser three woods and destroy the other golfers on the way to victory.
At the time of this writing, I'm not hearing tons of chatter about Koepka around the DFS industry. The silence is music to my ears, because the reigning back-to-back U.S. Open champion is perhaps my favorite play this week. Koepka is a player that came up through the ranks of the Challenge and European Tours. For an American, he is extremely comfortable playing on a European links course. He has played very well on tough layouts and in his previous Open Championship appearances, including a T10 at St. Andrews in 2015 and a T6 last year at Royal Birkdale.
Koepka's stats won't blow you away and are a bit skewed by the time he missed with a wrist injury earlier this season, but I have learned to look past his stats and focus on his results. Koepka is a gamer that shows up on the big stage. I kind of love the idea of starting GPP lineups with Koepka as my highest priced player. With the relaxed major pricing, at $9,200 on DraftKings, Koepka can be the base of some unbelievably balanced lineups. I expect Tommy Fleetwood to soak up a ton of ownership at this price point, but I'm all-in on the T-1000 golf killing machine this week.
The Ponies
Patrick Reed (DK - $8,400 & FD - $11,400 )
Our first Pony this week is the reigning Masters champion Patrick Reed. It's an understatement to say 2018 has been a great year for Reed. He picked up a T2 at the Valspar, which he followed up with a T7 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Then Reed won a little tournament down in Augusta, Georgia that gives a green jacket to the winner. On the heels of his major breakthrough at the Masters, Reed mounted a Sunday charge at Shinnecock Hills and very nearly stole this year's U.S. Open.
Like Brooks Koepka, Reed's stats don't blow you away. Unlike Koepka, Reed doesn't have tremendous physical tools. So what makes Patrick Reed a good option at this week's Open Championship? I can't offer a definitive answer for what makes Reed a great player, but it seems that he possesses an almost immeasurable drive to win. This is a guy that played his way onto the PGA Tour by playing Monday Qualifiers. Those of you that know the sport well, know how impossible that is. How does a guy that plays his way onto the PGA Tour in the most difficult way possible stare down and defeat Rory McIlroy in a Ryder Cup? How does that guy hold off Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler to win a green jacket? I'm not sure, but I don't think it's measured by ShotLink. If the guy can handle grinding out Monday Qualifiers, he can handle Carnoustie.
This is not a news flash, but Patrick Reed isn't popular. He has some questionable things in his past, a strained relationship with his parents, and almost no friends on the PGA Tour. I say all this not to trash Patrick Reed, but to illustrate that he probably won't be a popular choice with casual DFS players this week. I expect his ownership will be less than what it should be, simply due to the fact that he is not a guy that most people like pulling for. I love him as a contrarian GPP option. He is great to pair with Justin Rose in order to differentiate lineups.
Alex Noren (DK - $8,300 & FD - $9,800 )
Is this the Swede you were expecting? Make no mistake, I love Henrik Stenson this week...but so does everyone else! Let's pivot to Alex Noren, who with a salary $100 more expensive than Stenson, will garner much less ownership. Noren kicked off the year by going on a heater during the early portion of the PGA Tour season. The Swede has also been known to go on winning binges on the European Tour. In short, when Noren is on, he can play at an elite level. His reputation as a streaky player really makes me love the fact that Noren staged a Sunday charge to capture the HNA Open de France title two weeks ago in Paris.
Like Stenson, Noren is a ballstriking extraordinaire. He ranks 26th in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green, 14th in Strokes Gained: Approach, and 38th in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee. Noren has also been elite on the greens in 2018, coming in at ninth in Strokes Gained: Putting. He's a veteran of the European Tour and is familiar with both links golf and Carnoustie.
Echoing some of the game theory principles we have discussed with our other options, Noren makes great sense as a pivot play. I expect Stenson to draw huge ownership at his $8,200 price tag. Moving to Noren at an almost identical price gives us a play that the casual DFS fan might not be as familiar with and helps to differentiate our lineups from the masses. Fire Noren up in the Millionaire Maker.
Ian Poulter (DK - $7,800 & FD - $9,400 )
I'm going with what some might consider a boring play at this price point. The veteran of 16 Open Championships, Ian Poulter has experienced a career resurgence in 2018. Surprise, surprise, it's a Ryder Cup year! The Englishman captured his first ever PGA Tour stroke-play title earlier this season at the Houston Open, after finding a spark with a putter change at the WGC Match Play event. Poulter has continued his excellence after the win, logging a Top-10 at the RBC Heritage and a T11 at The Players Championship. Poulter was most recently in the mix at the U.S. Open, before fading into a T25 finish.
While Poulter's rediscovered putting stroke certainly kickstarted his comeback earlier this year, his elite ballstriking has allowed him to continue finding success. Poulter ranks 21st in Strokes Gained: Approach, 36th in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green, and 25th in Driving Accuracy Percentage. Fairways and greens might not be exciting, but they will be of the utmost importance at Carnoustie this week.
Poulter should be the cornerstone of cash game lineups this week. He offers a great deal of safety, with sneaky upside at his $7,800 DraftKings price tag. The veteran is a sleeper GPP play and is not especially a fan favorite on this side of the Atlantic. Poulter has been through the ups and downs that come in Open Championships. I would not be surprised at all if Poulter grinds away and backdoors a Top-10 at Carnoustie.
Stewart Cink (DK - $6,600 & FD - $8,000)
My Open Championship value play is Stewart Cink, Attorney-At-Law (Check out Cink's DraftKings profile picture!) He can represent you in a lawsuit or carry your DFS team in The Open Championship. I'm having a little fun with Cink, but in all seriousness, he is a tremendous value play this week. The 45-year-old has some mileage on the tires, but I actually think his experience will be an advantage at Carnoustie. Cink captured the 2009 Open Championship and has played very well on links courses throughout his career.
Cink isn't just a salary-saver this week, the veteran has been playing excellent golf recently. He logged back-to-back Top-5 finishes in June, with a T4 at the FedEx St. Jude Classic and a T2 at the Travelers Championship. Cink followed those performances with a solid T23 at the Quicken Loans National. He is a tremendous ball striker and currently sits ninth in Strokes Gained: Approach and 12th in Proximity to the Hole on the PGA Tour. Cink also has the mental toughness to withstand the challenges that Carnoustie and the weather will throw at players this week.
I normally specify that value picks are GPP-only plays, but this week I feel comfortable mixing Cink in some cash game lineups. His price is borderline ridiculous and will probably inflate his ownership a bit, but it will still be reasonable. The pricing is so soft that most casual players won't feel the need to look this far down the salary scale. Cink is an excellent option for those that want to get super-aggressive with the Stars & Scrubs approach. I love him in large-field GPP formats this week and will be heavy on him compared to the rest of the field.
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